'I'm not a natural rebel'

Twenty-five years after his father, Tony, failed to become deputy leader of the Labour party, Hilary Benn is standing for the same position - and is favourite to win. But will he be a thorn in the party's side, like his dad, or just toe the line? He talks to Jackie Ashley

Hilary Benn first entered the House of Commons as a small, fair-haired boy, with his brother Stephen. His father Tony's diaries relate that the two children "behaved simply beautifully ... Those tiny heads with the hair so short just poked above the back of the seat and looked like two little eggs all ready to fall like Humpty Dumpty. We met a lot of people and went over to the Jewel Tower before we had strawberries and cream on the terrace. They were so excited." If there is a whiff of Enid Blyton about it all, well, it was 1958. Now the flaxen tot represents the fourth generation of Benns in parliament, and is bidding to be Labour's deputy leader. And, yes, he still behaves beautifully.

Twenty-five years ago Hilary's father fought for the same job, losing by less than 1% of the vote to Denis Healey. Back then, Tony Benn, champion of the left, was promoting the nationalisation of the top 100 companies, unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Union and radical changes to empower Labour activists. No more strawberries and cream for him.

Today Hilary Benn is a loyal member of Tony Blair's cabinet, careful not to upset any apple carts, and deliberately praising both Blair and Gordon Brown during the course of our interview. Yet he's also, unmistakably, a Benn: "I come from a Labour tradition. The Labour party is deep in my soul. I grew up in a household where we talked about the state of the world over breakfast, when we ate at night, and all points in between."

Benn Jr certainly had a classic radical London upbringing, from Holland Park comprehensive in its heyday, through Sussex University (Russian and East European studies, no less), then research officer for a trade union while he cut his teeth on Ealing council in the Thatcher years. He knows a thing about being deputy: he was deputy leader of the council, and of the Labour Group before entering the Commons. For a Benn, he left getting into parliament rather late. After two unsuccessful elections in Ealing he was finally elected for Leeds Central in 1999 at a low-key by-election following the early death of the Foreign Office minister Derek Fatchett.

Benn was 45. By now he was well to the right of his father, pushed there by Labour's long years in opposition. He had also been at the heart of things during the early stages of the New Labour era, working as David Blunkett's special adviser while Blunkett was trying to put flesh on Blair's "education, education, education" promises. The 60s and 70s radical had become a 90s moderate, just like so many others. If Benn Sr finds this a disappointment, he has hidden it behind a firm front of family pride.

Now 52, Benn the Younger denies following in his father's footsteps - "I don't feel it's picking up unfulfilled business" - but insists, in a tone that certainly echoes his dad's, that "I've got a contribution to make." He goes on, just as his father would have done, "We've all got a responsibility to play our part." I feel as though I'm in the company of a vicar - a nice vicar, not a hectoring one, who occasionally punctures his conversation with great gusts of loud laughter.

The similarity with his father is uncanny. Hilary Benn greets me in shirtsleeves, with a Tony Benn grin, a Tony Benn voice and, on the table, prepared for our interview, a Tony Benn tape-recorder. Like his father, he is a diarist. "I have kept one since I was about eight.

Written, and then in recent years, tape as well. Every day."

He calls himself a "compulsive chronicler", admitting to a certain obsessive behaviour. Where does he find the time? "By not getting enough sleep every night," is the reply.

Young Hilary was often at his father's side during those early years when Tony was either a hero or an arch-villain, depending on your point of view. It seems to be a touchingly warm relationship, even now. At one point, trying to nail down Hilary's politics, I ask him if he would have voted for his father as deputy leader. He seems almost affronted: "I certainly would have, yes, of course." Out of political agreement or personal loyalty? "I would have voted for my dad because he's my dad. I've always supported him to the best of my ability and he's always done the same to me. We continue to talk about politics all the time. We were doing so again last night."

But arguing, surely, particularly over Iraq? "We do argue vigorously about it. He takes one view and I take another." And here the differences begin to emerge: "My visits to Iraq, the Iraqi people I've met, have really brought home to me what life was like when Saddam was there, just how courageous they are in trying to use the democratic opportunity they've now got. I would like to hear more voices speaking out now in support of democracy." That's one kitchen-table argument you could sell tickets for. Does Hilary still support the decision to invade? He pauses. "It's the thing I've thought about more in my life than anything else. It was a very difficult decision to take but I think it was the right thing to do."

Across the rest of the political agenda, he sounds entirely mainstream. He is hugely affected by his time at international development, punctuated by a year in charge of prisons at the Home Office. His main achievements in government so far include his work on the Sudan, on anti-HIV programmes for Africa, and the establishment of a UN humanitarian fund for emergencies. He was one of Blair's appointees on the Commission for Africa, the prime minister's big project to improve life on the continent.

He is perhaps lucky that he has worked so long in an area of politics that is so uncontroversial among party members. How would he have behaved had he had one of the hot issues of the Blair years in his lap - hospital reform, the assault on "bog-standard comprehensives", ID cards or new immigration controls? The answer is surely that he would have gone along with them. Hilary Benn is emphatically New Labour, not old, though he fastidiously rejects the tag.

His instincts are clearly do-gooding and statist; he has been drawn to the centre ground, rather than rushing there with loud cries of joy. He seems one of nature's puritans, the kind of politician who will be entirely comfortable with the belt-tightening agenda brought about by global warming. He says he is trying to be more green, and one can believe it. "There's no doubt that we are going to have to change the way we live our lives. There will come to be another meaning to 'living within your means'." He has had some clear influence on his father. Hilary became a vegetarian because of his first wife, "and I have been one now for 34 years. I persuaded my father to become a vegetarian a few years back."

Benn's first wife, Rosalind, whom he met at university, died tragically early of lung cancer at the age of 26, just five years after their marriage. The couple had no children. Three years later Benn met and married Sally Clark, a special needs teacher, who now runs his Commons office. One of four children, he has four of his own, a girl and three boys, ranging from 18 to 26; the Benns clearly like big families and revel in being a tribe. When he's not working, he has blamelessly quiet middle-class hobbies, such as gardening in his Chiswick home, and watching sport. It is always an incredibly dangerous thing for an interviewer to say but in a party so hit by scandals recently, he seems a pretty safe bet.

There is the heroin addiction, of course. Only joking: like his dad, Hilary is a teetotaller as well as a vegetarian. He looks remarkably young for his age, so perhaps a virtuous life is good for you. I suspect the teetotalism might be because he wants to stay in control, but he says it's mainly because he doesn't like the taste of alcohol very much. "It makes me handy for driving and it makes me very popular for giving people lifts. It makes me a more socially useful individual." And he laughs that loud Benn laugh.

While other candidates for the deputy leadership, such as Peter Hain and Harriet Harman, were busy pressing the flesh throughout the party conference season, Benn has only recently declared his intention to stand - very properly waiting until John Prescott announced he would be stepping down (the vicar again). Infuriatingly for his opponents, he's already hurtled into the lead in the bookies stakes.

So what's his pitch for the job? According to Benn, the post needs "someone who is going to ensure that the views of the party and the views of the unions are represented in government, someone who will give leadership but also honest advice, someone who is a good listener and wants to work with everybody, and someone who is committed to the things that Labour as a party is trying to achieve." Hmmm. So far, so bland. Can Tony Benn's son really be so centrist?

"I'm not much of a natural rebel" he says, though he admits to having been much more leftwing in his younger days. He's changed now because "life is a great teacher, and you find out what works and what doesn't work and in the end you grapple with the world as it is as you try to change it to how you would like it to be."

But if he's no rebel, he has a clear analysis as to what's wrong with Labour, calling for "a different kind of politics, a different kind of tone".In Benn's view, "a gap has opened up between the electorate and politicians. "We have to listen more." He wants a bigger role for the party in taking decisions: "One of the difficult things about being in government is that ministers become ministers, and the civil service machine takes you up, and the party sometimes feels that it's looking in from the window outside. I think it's really important that the party feels it's inside the conversation." He remains a constitutional reformer, with a clear preference for a directly elected second chamber. And he's an advocate of proportional representation.

Hilary has told Gordon Brown he is standing, gets on well with him, but does not seem to have received any formal endorsement. His big theme is the danger of cynicism -"not doubt, not scepticism, not querying, not criticism, not asking questions - all of those are absolutely legitimate - but if we fall prey to cynicism we are lost as a society." His answer is that politics has over-promised in the past, which is what has produced the cynicism among voters - too big promises followed by inflated expectations and then disappointment at the results. This pattern has been, he says, "profoundly unhealthy. I think it's unhealthy in personal relationships and I think it's unhealthy between government and the people.

"I think in life you should always be straight and set out what you are going to do, and how long you think it's going to take." It is a none-too-coded attack on the years of spin, and in saying this he sounds most like his father, nearest too to the radical non-conformist tradition of the Benn family generally.

A generation ago, that appeal for straightforwardness in the face of the political game-players and cynics, wide-eyed in its sincerity and simplicity, was rejected by Labour. It was too close to the extreme leftism that was tearing the party to pieces up and down the country, a frantic Diggers' revolution in the age of Margaret Thatcher. But times have changed and Hilary is certainly not Tony. Actually, he is neither Tony. He is Bennism defanged, but he is also a moral fresh face for Blairism.

Ask him what is the biggest challenge Labour faces and he replies without hesitation: "the challenge in my constituency is the same as the challenge in the world - it's to overcome the big gap between those who have and those who don't and that's what Labour came into being to do, and we've got a lot more yet to achieve. That's what I think."

And that's perhaps why he's currently favourite for the deputy leader's job. For all his Blairite credentials, a true Labour heart clearly still beats within. Added to that he is popular in the party. Among the adjectives colleagues use to describe him, I've found "moral, decent, courteous, earnest, and diligent". Whether his tone is right for the times, we shall see soon enough.